I JUST LOVE HOW THE LORD WORKS!

June 15, 2015 email Hello Family! So guess what I'm doing today? Going down to Springfield and going caving!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am super excited! Because of that though, this might not be the longest email ever, and I can't promise a letter. I think I will have time when we get back from caving but I'm not totally sure. Any way, stuff about my week! Well, first of all it sounds like you had a good one! Congrats Sam! That is so awesome! (Sam graduated from OSU with her BA) I wish I could have been there freezing in the stands with the rest of the fam, but I was there in spirit. Instead I was out here sweatin' in the heat and humidity! It is so flippin' hot here! haha We went tracting the other day in Kimberling City; 95deg and I am pretty sure it was something like 80% humidity. hot. Hot. HOT. That's ok though :) We got to talk to some pretty cool peeps :D We thought we found a potential investigator for YSA but when we tried to contact him by phone his mom pounced on us and told us to get lost. Not in those words or that way exactly...but basically that's what she did. Oh well. He is moving out soon so... We had a kind of cool experience on Tuesday. We went out to Rockaway Beach to teach a less active, Austin, who ended up being sick and not able to be taught. Lame sauce. So we decided to go try and visit another less active named Jared. It took us a little bit to find his house, (I was the navigator and I guess I left a little bit to be desired...) but we did eventually and went and knocked on his door a few times. It didn't seem like anyone but the dogs were home but eventually someone opened the door! Yay! Patience is a thing. Any way, it wasn't Jared, it was his room-mate Daniel who IS NOT A MEMBER. He was a really cool guy and we got to talk to him for a while and share the Book of Mormon with him. It was great! He seemed really interested and when we asked if we could come back and talk to him more about it he said we could :) We set up a time for the next day and then left for the night. When we came back on Wednesday no one was home! NO!!!! But again, we just stood there for a while and talked with Lauren (our YSA exchange. She is awesome! She served her mission in England) and low and behold Jared pulled up in his car! He said that Daniel wasn't home (lame) but as we kept talking to Jared we found out that Daniel had talked to him about the Book of Mormon the night before and Jared was really excited about it! He really wants Daniel to read in the Book of Mormon and when we asked if he would be willing to help Daniel by reading with him he said yes! I just love how the Lord works! Here is a less active who is going to help his non member room-mate receive a testimony of the restored gospel and probably through that come back into activity himself! SO COOL! Any way, it was pretty great. Thursday we had a fun thing happen. We were out with Sister Brazeal from the West ward trying to visit some people that Bishop had asked us to go see. One of them was out in Reeds Spring and we could not find the place for the life of us! I am pretty sure the address was for an empty lot. Any way, in the midst of trying to find this house though, we met some other cool peeps! Shannon (actaully a man) and his son Ethen. Ethen was out playing basketball and Sister Gerard challenged him to a game of PIG with the deal that if we won we got to tell him about the Book of Mormon. He agreed and the game began :) Lot's of prayer going on during that game of PIG! Sister Gerard won and we were able to talk to him about the Book of Mormon. Nothing seemed to really come from it. He said that he appreciated what we were doing but he wanted to stay with his church and didn't even want a copy of the Book of Mormon. Well, we went around the house to get Sister Brazeal after our talk with Ethen and found that she was talking to Shannon and had invited him to church and he had said that he might just come! He invited us to his church as well, which President has given us permission to go to other churches to see what they're like, so we might just do it! We think that if we go to their church they will be more willing to come to ours. Keep your fingers crossed! Hmm. I can't really think of anything else. I left my list of things to write about back at the apartment, of course. lol Hopefully I will have time to write you a letter! Have an amazing week! I love you all! Listen to a little Bing Crosby for me :) Sister Cryer

THIS WEEKS ADVENTURES

Letter dated 8 June 2015 Dear Family, Well will you just look at this. An actual letter! Aren't you lucky!...Yeah, sorry about the whole letter writing thing. I am repenting. So, I don't know if you've been keeping track of the transfer, but IT'S ALMOST OVER! We get transfer calls this Saturday. Crazy. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be leaving, but I hope I'm wrong. This transfer really has been a blast though. I feel like I have been learning and re-learning so much about missionary work and how we do missionary work and...just everything. It's been a bit of a roller coaster but I am all up for learning, so no complaints here! One of the things that I am learning about is the importance of members. I thought I understood the importance of members, but I am realizing that I still have tons to learn about it! I always just want to get out and get things done. I don't want to wait for or rely on the members! BUT, I tend to kind of leave the members in the dust a little bit when I do that. So I am still trying to get the balance between working with the members and just working on our own. I'll get it at some point! So, kind of funny, kind of sad story. First, last Sunday we had a sign up going around to bring stuff to the Break the Fast. Sister Gerard and I decided to set the example to support the activity and signed up to bring a dessert. Throughout the week we kept forgetting and then being reminded that we had signed up to bring something. We had no idea what we were bringing and then (hallelujah) Sister Gerard got a package sent to her with a lemon bar mix in it. So, the decision was made, we knew what we were making and Saturday night we made it....kind of. We mixed everything up and then tried to bake it, but our oven quit working! So after 20 minutes of baking it was still very much unbaked, and by then it was almost 10:30 NO! So we had to stick it in the fridge overnight and then Sunday morning we baked it. Well, they didn't turn out so hot, as attested by the practically full pan that we took home. I decided to test them and see how bad they really were. They were BAD. Let's just say that when I was making them Saturday night and hoped that they didn't taste like they smelled (like playdough)...well, yeah. That hope didn't come true. They tasted like playdough. Super gross. So yea, that happened. On Saturday I got as close as I've ever come to being attacked by dogs on my mission. We were out on a street just walking, looking for people to OTM when all of a sudden we hear some really intense barking and growling going on from behind some tall grass at one of the houses. As I peered through the grass from the other side of the street I could see two dogs. Not nice looking dogs. I couldn't tell if they were behind a fence or tied or anything though. Sister Gerard decided to venture a little further and see if she could find out if they were contained in some way. As she moved further up the street the barks and growls escalated. And then, the dogs ran around the house and then came out on the other side still barking. Well, so they weren't tied, and we could see by this time that there was no fence holding them back. There must be something though because we could tell that they wanted to tear us to shreds! We figured there must be an electric fence/shock collar system in place or something. Not withstanding, we decided that we should probably not keep going up the street! So back we went, and maybe a little quicker that we had come! That also reminds me, we were foiled in our attempt to contact a referral by a stupid black wasp that was hanging out by their door. Neither one of us was brave enough to go up and knock with that black whopper of a bug sitting right there ready to attack us! We had one of our investigators, Eric, sing Amazing Grace to us standing on his front porch. Dang, can that man sing or what?! Anyway, that was cool. OK. Lets get spiritual for a second now. I have been studying boldness. Today I read Proverbs 28:1 and 2 Nephi 9:40 and from those I went to Moroni 7:37? (the one where he talks about charity). Anyway, I learned that to be lovingly bold requires charity because you need first, a love of God and truth, and second, a love of the person your are talking too. Both of those things are included in charity. It was a cool realization for me. Well, I'd better go. Hope you have an amazing week! Love Sister Cryer

I'M GOING TO BE IN A NEW MISSION....

Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So this week has been pretty great. On Monday we got together with the Elders in our zone and a few youth from the 1st and 2nd wards and played soccor and football. Boy did they have a time explaining foot ball to me! haha! I kept pulling Elder Pederson aside and saying, "Ok, in Sister Cryer language, could you tell me what they just said?" It was funny. He was having a good laugh about it. I have been learning to love sports since I have been out that is for sure. I don't know why that seems to be so necessary for me, but I guess it is. On Wednesday we had some fun with tracting! I have never had doors slammed in my face until now, and honestly it kind of made my day! I was laughing so hard after the first one, so much so that we had to wait a few minutes for me to compose myself before we knocked on the next door. On Thursday we had our zone conference. last time seeing the Shumways. Sad Day! We are sure going to miss them. We have Until July 1st with them and then President and Sister Loveland will come in the OTM will be gone. The mission home is moving to Bentonville Arkansas so the mission will be the Arkansas Bentonville Mission (the ABM) from now on. Weird. Any way, it was a really good zone conference! We actually talked a lot about the Bible. President Shumway has so much knowledge about the history of the Bible! It was really neat as he went through and talked about the Nicaen Creed and the Trinity and all this stuff that began and make up the common christian belief of today. He said something interesting though that I really liked. Well, a couple things actually. One was that the Bible is NOT common ground. A lot of times we use it as such because people always want to know if we believe in the Bible, but President Shumway talked about how it's not common ground because we only believe in the Bible as far as it is translated correctly. He also talked about how we sometimes try and use the Bible to prove the Book of Mormon. That doesn't work. Why not? Because of doctrine! We can find in the Book of Mormon (Mormon 7:9) that the Book of Mormon is meant to prove the Bible. Not the other way around. So the power of the Book of Mormon comes when we use it to prove and clarify the Bible. So cool! Any way, it was such a good zone conference and I was able to feel the spirit. Sorry, this is a really short email! ...But you WILL have a letter from me this week! How do I know? Because it is sitting right here next to me just waiting to be stuck into the mail! So you will have a letter :) Have an amazing week! Love Sister Cryer Here are some pics from a hike we took.

HEAVENLY FATHER SHOWS US WHAT HE WANTS US TO DO

June 1, 2015 email I am actually really glad that picture worked out for the plaque! It was may favorite :) So I was super lame last week and didn't send you a letter! The reason for that was our preparation day was cut short (we had a dinner apt at 4:30) and we kind of lost track of time a little bit playing basket ball and ultimate Frisbee (with a football) with the elders. It was a whole ton of fun and I got super sweaty. Ultimate was my favorite. We just went out and found a field at the rec plex and went for it, three on each team. I even managed to be an asset to my team! It was pretty great. :) Sister Gerard has been teaching me about sports. Making dinner the other night she told me about some of the rules in football. I didn't retain much, but after playing some football today with the Elders, it made a little bit more sense :) I CAN BE TAUGHT! Any way, we are having a great time. I actually LOVE training! I didn't think I would but I really do. It keeps me on my toes and SO much better than I feel like I would be otherwise. It's just awesome :) So, let me think what news I have that I can share from my little life :D Oh, here's something. I don't know if you know or not but I HIT MY 9 MONTH MARK LAST WEDNESDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Crazy. It feels like...not that long. I mean, I am halfway done with my mission! What the heck. Any way, that's something that happened this week :) Um...We had a miracle on Monday night :) We were on exchanges with Patrick and we were out of ideas! We had tried to visit some potential investigators and less actives with no success and we had about 20 minutes left of the night. We came out of an apartment complex after knocking on someones door with no luck, and just kind of stood there, unsure of what we needed to do. It was raining a little bit and we had a pretty good thunder and lightning storm going on. As we are standing in front of the apartment complex who should pull up on his bike but Nick, one of the YSA's and actually a YSA that we had been trying to see for a few weeks! We said hi and asked him what he was doing and he said he was going home. Patrick said that he hadn't known that Nick came this way to get home. Nick paused for a second and then said, "Well, actually I've never come this way before. I just felt like I should tonight." Whaaaaaat! Me and Sister Gerard looked at each other. Obviously we were supposed to talk to Nick. So we did! We stood outside in the rain (and it started pouring) and had a lesson with him, and it was really great! ...actaully why we didn't stand under the covered area of the apartment complex is beyond me... That maybe would have been a good idea. Oh well. So that was a miracle. I love when Heavenly Father does that! He leads us along, plans fall through, and then he shows us what he wants us to do. It's awesome :) On Wednesday I SAW FIREFLIES!!!!!!!!!! Oh my goodness it was the best thing EVER! They are so pretty! We were on exchanges with President Grady when I saw one for the first time and I just started dancing around and laughing and then I ran over and hugged Sister Gerard because I needed to hug someone I was so happy! President Grady just stood there and laughed. On Thursday we got to do service at an old historic home on a hiking trail. We were cleaning up the garden in front. Saw a snake (Elder Alen freaked out, even though it was only a little grass snake. Poor guy. He is terrified of snakes!) and a wolf spider. Super big. Me and Elder Alen traded spots! I told him, "I will deal with the snake if you deal with the spider!" Then from that I got at tick on my arm which I found Friday morning. That was fun trying to get that little bugger off (pun intended). My first tick. Crazy life. What was funny about that was I was fine during the whole pulling it off procedure. Sister Gerard did the honors. But after it was off and gone I felt super sick and actually had to sit down on the kitchen floor! Haha! Don't know what that was all about but...it went away so it's all good :) Well, That's about all I got right now. Love you all! Sister Cryer

OUR MISSION FINDS 243 NEW INVESTIGATORS IN A WEEK!

5/25/2015 Email AHHHHHH!!! I feel like I have no time in my life anymore! haha! Our preparation day has been cut short today because of appointments that we have tonight. Oh well, it should be good. We are hoping to get three new investigators tonight (a family) so it should be great :) We are excited. That was pretty impressive with the coconut there dad! ;) As far as your questions go, the week has been awesome (more details on that in a min) training is great! I love it actually because it helps me to be the absolute best missionary I can be. I seem to do a lot better when I have responsibility, even though I don't like it! haha I perform better. Any way, the weather has been fine. We've had some pretty sweet thunder storms, but they happen in the middle of the night and wake us up, so that hasn't been so cool. It'd be a lot better if they would happen during the day when we could see them! I had cold lentils the other day. ...that was interesting. Not my favorite things in the world but I ate them. Along with cold potatoes and pork. My stomach was not happy with me afterwards! I haven't seen any fireflies!!! It's super frustrating! I want to see them so bad and I feel like they know that and have gone into hiding, but whatever. So the week! We've actually had some really cool things happen this week. I won't tell you about all of them because I don't have time right now (you should get a letter this week though and I will tell you more in that) but I'll tell you some of the cool stuff that's happened :) The 10 week goal for this week was to find 3 new investigators in each area. We found three new investigators for the west ward and got some potentials lined up for the YSA as well for this week. Even though we didn't totally hit the goal though I could see how Heavenly Father was blessing us to find people to teach. I mean heck, we went and OTM'd in Walmart and got two appointments set up from that! We were also able to contact a member referral, her name is Randi, and we are teaching her now. We found a guy named Phillip for YSA (I will tell you more about him in my letter) and we found a family that we will be seeing again this week by using the My Family Book. It's just been amazing! Oh, and we got like, 8 referrals from the Duttons in one sitting! That was crazy! We just knocked on their door and said, "We are going to tract your street, is there anyone you would suggest that we try and see?" and they gave us 8 names. It was so great! They were so excited too! I just love seeing how the Lord takes care of us. We got an email from the Shumways today telling us that we found 243 new investigators this past week as a mission which is just one short of the record of 244 new investigators in a week that was set by the mission 18 months ago when there were 80 more missionaries in the OTM than there are now! Isn't that amazing? I just think it's so cool. Any way, I am pretty much out of time, but I will send you a letter with some more stuff :) Love you! Sister Cryer

IT WORKED OUT JUST AS IT WAS SUPPOSE TO

Email May 18, 2015 Hello family! So this week was really good. We had zone training meeting this week and interviews with President. It was SO GOOD! My interview with President was exactly what I needed. It was my last one with him though! He is leaving the first of July. We also bumped into a crazy man who was saying that the Bible is the sign of the beast... That was an interesting conversation. He kept us there listening to him for almost half an hour as he went on and on about how evil the bible was. I finally got a word in and said, "Well, it was so nice to meet you. Have a great day," and then we left. Crazy life. So here is a spiritual experience that I had yesterday: We had an exchange with Brydon (which was awesome in and of itself. We have been trying to get out with him since I got here, him being the branch mission leader and everything) and we were planning on going to see a potential investigator named Josh. We were late getting over to Josh's place though because of our dinner appointment and when we got there we realized that we didn't have his apartment number. Ok...so we gave him a call with no answer. We decided to wait for a few minutes to see if he would call back, and while we were waiting I saw a dad and his son standing outside across the street from us. After a few minutes I thought, "Well this is stupid," and walked over to them to start up a conversation. I am so glad I did too! They are awesome! The dads name is Jeremy and his sons name is Zach. Golden. Jeremy has been struggling with his faith for a little while and we were able to have a great conversation with him and share our testimonies. He agreed to meet with us again and said he would love to talk to someone who converted to the LDS church and hear their take on Joseph Smith and stuff to see how they came to know that it was true. Anyway, as we were wrapping up our conversation with Jeremy, Josh came back! We were able to talk to him a little bit, not for too long because it was getting dark and we didn't have another girl with us so we couldn't go inside, but we got to set up another appointment to meet with him and maybe his room mate too, Chris. After that we had just enough time to finish talking to Brydon about some people, and then send in our indicators for the night. Basically, everything worked out totally not how we had planned, but just how it was supposed too. SO COOL! Have an awesome week y'all! Love, Sister Cryer

A PICTURE EMAIL

August 11 2015 email Hello family! Wow it was so good to see all of you yesterday! Y'll lookin' mighty fine! ;) I don't really have much to tell ya because of the skype call yesterday though! haha! ... I will just send you some pics. That was a good idea that you had dad! So, the first one is when we took our investigator Ronan and his mom Amanda to go see the Hughes show. Then we have me and Sister Moon being weird at our zone outing last Monday. Then the third one is a picture of us with a bunch of our YSA's at FHE. we were playing capture the flag. Starting from the top left we have: Devin Nanny, President Grady, Johnny Onoh, Casey Hall, Nick Foree, Kyle Knudsen, Matt Smith, and Eddie Wachub. Then starting from the bottom left we have Sidney (don't know her last name), Lauren Felicia, Shayla Ellsworth, Kendra Dyer, Kaytlin Knudsen, Sister Moreno, Marrisa (don't know her last name, probably soon to be Knudsen), Mindy (don't know her last name), me and Ashley Fatino. The fourth is one of me being cool in front of the Bretts sign on our run Wednesday morning. And the last one is a pic of me and Sister Gerard, my trainee :) Hope you all have a wonderful week! Love you all! Sister Cryer